Meet Anna Cambell
by Sasami1
Summary: The introduction of a new turtle. ORIGINAL IDEA TO THE MAX!
1. Default Chapter

Meet Anna Cambell

Twenty years ago.

A family. A family of four. Mother-Karen, Father-Steven, Son-Chad, Son-Eric. A young family, living in the whipping cold beauty of northern Vermont. A family that liked salmon.

A week and three days until Christmas. Children are napping, too young for school. A knock at the front door. A pause. A knock at the front door. Karen sits in her room, bent over a work table. A puzzle is scattered before her. A baby moniter is beside her. An aloe plant sits in the sunlight of the window, and a grey cat stares at the the table from the floor.

Gears grind, and tires squeal towards traction on the icey dirt road. The truck finds its pace, and begins laboring back up the hill, a great heavy plume of brown-grey smoke discharging from the roof's exhaust.

Karen rises from her tall stool, and leans over to the window, seeing the spread of dark gases float in the wind. She catches the yellow marker of UPS' as the truck turns out of sight. Still holding the small piece of the puzzle in her hand, Karen pulls on a knitted cardigan and goes downstairs to the front door. The knob is cold like the outside, and she opens it up. On the front stoop is the large box from her mother, with the Vancouver Salmon. The christmas present for Karen and Steve. The kids' arrived seperately, since it wasn't ordered from a market.

The box was heavier than it had been past years, Karen mused, as she carried it inside to the dining room table. Maybe it was the baby weight that made her a little weaker. She would call her mother while she opened the package, that would be nice. No, she would call right afterward. She would need two hands to open it and put the meat away. Maybe bring the kids down? To see what Nanna had given them. But what a bother, getting them up from sleep when they would be so tired, and only Chad might understand.

Karen took a small knife out of the block in the kitchen, and found the puzzle piece still in her palm. She tucked it in her pocket to be safe. Poising the blade on the tape, where the cardboard panels came together, Karen thought only a moment that it was strange her mother had changed the place she sent the salmon from. The simple and bold TCRI label looked more like a restaurant supplier than a christmas market catalogue.

Two hours later.

A storm was moving in, as every radio weatherman had predicted. Dry snow rained down in great clouds from the white sky. A teal SUV was parked in the single garage beside the house. Steven was inside with his wife. No one could reach Karen's mother, and no one else could tell them where to reach TCRI. The package was still on the table.

A hard plastic casing was open to reveal a thick blue foam interior. Set in the center of the cube was a large egg, the size a little smaller than a basketball. Perfectly round. Clean flake white, with a handful of light cream splotches, hardly visible farther than a pencil length away.

Steve order his wife to stand back. He was going to pick it up again. Karen gathered herself back in the kitchen, watching Steve with wide brown eyes. He lifted the globe from its nest and held it to the light once again. The shell was near the end of its development, and almost completely opaque. Still, the faint grey silouhette of a feotus was visible, curled up in the confining shell. Steve examined all that he could see, drawing back to medical school what he remembered of fetal development. At least at appearences it was human. But what human was grown in an egg? It was contrary to nature, simply put.

Upstairs, Chad was walking around in his room. The baby would cry intermittedly, and was about to start wailing soon. The door was locked from the outside. 

I think I see some fingers.' Steve murmered. It's moving around...'

Maybe it's going to hatch.' Karen said. Steve set the egg back and went into the kitchen with his wife, where they had a clear shot of the dining room table. They waited as the egg sat still. They waited as the egg shifted. They waited in the kitchen. The shell began to twist, and a small micro hole cut through. Slowly. A tear began, the egg pushed. More twisting, and the rip lengthened. 

A small green head worked it's way out into the dining room. Karen shrieked. Karen opened her eyes again and screamed. She nearly fell backwards, and her feet seeing this as a good idea, turned and sprinted from the kitchen to the back door.

Oh, ...oh lord. _Oh_, _LORD_!' Steve stumbled back after his wife. Seeing that gooey green face, and black piercing eyes behind the slime that no amount of doctorhood or autopsies had prepared him for. He slammed the back door tight, sealing the creature inside, and them safe outdoors. Karen was running for the garage, her long brown hair undone and flying in the wind above her flapping and helpless skirt. Her broken screams came and went with the howling of the coming storm. 

Steve stayed at the back door, breathing in the cold, looking for his sanity. It came to him slowly with the bite of snow on his face, and cold that permeated his clothes. He looked again for his wife, and saw her thrashing about in the garage window, some part of her trying to get away in the car, the other part trying to get away. He looked through the door window back into the house. 

He found stillness.

Rationally, they must go back inside. This thing had to be dealt with. And eventually Chad would find his way downstairs, and may be scarred for life, if he didn't. Staying outside would only give him a sickness.

_Karen!_' Steve called, jogging towards the garage. The figure in the window paused. Karen emmerged from the side door, and sprinted towards him. Her eyes were wild and frightened, and he caught her in an embrace. She squeezed the life out of him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder.

Oh god, oh holy god, father, lord. why... lord why, oh Steve. Oh god.' She whispered hard into his shoulder. He squeezed her back.

Karen. Get a hold of yourself now.' He said sternly, like he remember his father doing. Karen,' He held her away at arms length, looking hard into her eyes. Get control.' She swallowed and nodded vigerously.

I'm sorry, I--I'm ok. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' She looked around her surroundings, knowing them familiar, and taking the most brief survey of them.

We have to go back in. We have to take care this. Now come on.' Steve took her by the arm and lead her back to the wood house. They opened and closed the door and wiped their feet on the black mat. Entering through the kitchen, they went slowly, ready for anything, and knowing they were not ready at all. There was a knife on the counter, and Steve picked it up.

On the dining room table, in the case, the egg was broken open, and lay collapsed in the protective foam. At the foot of the case, in a contained puddle of its own placenta, a green form lay on the cherrywood table top. It didn't move.

Maybe, is it dead?' Karen asked her husband.

I don't--' It gurgled as he spoke, and shifted a little. Alive.' They waited until it stopped moving again, although a few noises still ementated from it. Steve stepped forward, and stood on tip toes to look over the top of it, taking quick reference to it all. The green, reptilian. But the arms and legs were much too long. And for a baby it was definately too large. Unless it was some rare foriegn breed. But, there was a small shell, undeveloped and wet, so it was a turtle.

A turtle. Of that size, might be a snapper, but it didn't have the pronounced beak, or even the basic shape. And the limbs. The purpose of the shell was to hid away the limbs, but those could never fit in there. What kind of turtle was it? Was it even a turtle? It had so many, for the lack of a better term, human characteristics. What kind of human was it? Was it even a human?

It's moving again!' Karen whispered. The creature turned, or rolled, onto it's back, seeming to feel the intensity of attention upon it. And as if it could sense the world it had just been brought into, it gave the saddest, softest cry from it's tiny mouth. Steve paused over it.

Those eyes, that he had thought were black, were really only the enlarged pupils from eyes that had been gestating in a world of darkness. And as they shrunk down, and the white around them could be seen, they seemed oh so much more human. The body was a baby's, legs and arms still curled in the feotal position they had been pressed into inside the egg.

Karen... get me some paper towels.' Steve whispered. A few moments later a mess of paper towels came to him, and he took them like pot holders. We should wash it off.' He picked the thing up carefully, one hand to support the neck, the other to support the body. It was heavy in his hands. They took it to the kitchen sink, and ran some lukewarm water. Karen wrang out a dish rag, and they cautiously cleaned the foggy goo off the baby. It squirmed, and cried like a pleased kitten at the warmth of the water. Quickly, something to dry it.' Karen took the nice blue hand towel and suddenly found Steve handing the creature to her. She took it, wrapping it in the soft towel. It was as small and heavy as Eric had been less than a year ago. It won't bite you,' Steve said softly. I don't think it has teeth.'

It's an alien.' Karen took her first real good look at the thing. It was looking back at her. She almost dropped it. 

Control, Karen.' Steve said gently, coming around to his wife's side. They both looked down on it. It was looking up at them. It's head shrunk down a ways into the shell. Steve chuckled lightly.

Why is it so big?' Karen asked.

I dunno.' It's head raised back out slower than it had gone in. Karen carefully took a corner of the towel and dried the water off it's head. It didn't jump at her, and so she held it up to have a look. It fit almost in the palm of her hand, it was so small. The thing made it's kitten cry again, and Karen smiled. The little three fingered hand found her free finger, and closed around it. Karen froze. It was touching her.

But not only that, it touched her how Eric touched her. And Chad too, when he was a baby. Holding her fingers with a new found strength to see how far they could squeeze. She was stunned to silence. 

Let me have it.' Steve said, taking the baby from her. He held it in the crook of his arm, looking down intently upon it. Karen watched them. 

Steve placed his finger in the palm of it's hand, and watched how it curled its fingers and thumb around it. The bright whites of the eyes, the long legs that kicked his arm once or twice. 

I think it's human.'

Present Day

New York City, the plows out in force. A snow storm passed through, closing schools and many businesses. Municiple plows are out in record numbers to clear the streets. Cars by the thousands are still on the road and swerve and skid their way to destinations. A pair of steaming trucks are left askew on the sidewalk after a collision.

Central park is where the children have gone. Sleds and inner tubes on their chests or backs, they plowed the snow themselves into racetracks and causeways. The rapid fire intersections were filled with the glee and shouts of dozens upon dozens of young girls and boys who reveled at the clouds of snow flurries that trailed after each rocket.

On the ground level a young girl walked alone and unsuspecting. She paused to breath in the dirty cold New York air, and smiled. To her, New York was beautiful.

_GANG WAY!!! **AAAAH, LOOK OUT!**_' The girl looked up as a silver donut with arms and legs eclipsed the sun and descended upon her. She screamed, but her mouth was muffled by plastic. The new snow broke her fall, as she fell back beneath the inner tube, sinking two feet into the ground. She had been hit by a cushioned ton of bricks. Oh _shit!_' The weight was lifted off her, and the darkness drew back. Are you ok?' Someone was asking, while digging out and arm or hers.

Yeah, I'm ok, I'm fine, I'm fine.' The next thing she knew she was standing up, and the boy was brushing the snow off her with the side of his mitten. Woah.' She checked her balance, startled to be upright again.

Crap, I'm sorry. _I didn't see you standing there!_' The boy insisted. She was too busy pulling her scarf up to be concerned, and nodded her head vigerously at his apoligies.

_You're a jackass, Mike!_' Someone called from the top of the hill.

I'm fine, _really_.' She turned her head away, and pulled the hat down farther over the back of her head.

You're sure? I'm real sorry. _Tha-anks!_' The boy called, charging back up the hill with the silver tube.

_ANNIE!_' A man came tromping speedily through the snow. _ANNIE! Are you alright?_' Chad took Annie's arm, gulping for breath. _Are you hurt?_'

No, Chad, I'm fine.' Annie repeated insitantly. I'm ok.'

I saw that punk land right on you!' Chad growled.

He didn't see me.' She adjusted the scarf again, seeing that it was pulled over her protruding beak. 

You're sure?' They looked up at the hill to see the boys moving off towards another hill. _I should have your heads for this!_' Chad shook his gloved fist after them. They didn't seem to hear him.

Geez, calm down!' Annie pulled on his arm. You're acting like a crazy old man!'

Jerks.' He glared at all the kids playing on the hill. Annie laughed.

You used to do that too. Come on, let's keep walking.' She pulled him along down the boot trodden path. Chad was noticablely taller than his adopted sister. They looked almost like father and daughter. Chad was only twenty-five, but he carried himself as much older. And Anna had just turned twenty, yet she looked fourteen. She was short, and looked stalky under the layers of winter clothes. She had been five feet tall for several years already, and it was doubtful that she would grow any taller.

Her brothers, Chad and Eric, had grown up tall like their dad. They had their father's light hair and eyes, and their mother's excellent bone structure. And everyone at the hospital commented on what fine young men they were growing up to be.

Anna stayed home mostly. Their parents said that she was a sickly child, and couldn't be seen. She had an affliction to light, and had to remain in nearly total darkness during the day. Secretly, she had no photsensitivity. She was just too freakish to be seen as a child. And eventually, people stopped asking about her.

Anna spent most of her free time, as she grew older, in the solitude of the woods. Her father taught her to shoot arrows, and she would leave for weekends to practice wilderness survival while her brothers went into town. She learned to enjoy her solitude. For no matter often her parents told her she was a part of their family, no one could deny that she had no real family. That she was only their green orphan. But they went on together, and she loved them all. And then she went into the forest, where she could love herself. 

In the meantime, she, like her brothers, was home schooled by their mother. And after receiving her GED, she went on to correspondance courses for a degree in philosophy. Her brothers went to college. Chad went to NYU, Eric to JMU. Chad found an appartment in New York, and stayed there for med school. And for his sister's twentieth birthday, he convinced their reluctant parents to let her spend the month with him. Well supervised, and well armed in case someone tried to hurt them. Chad had a gun licsense, and kept a pistol in his case. Annie had flat knives banded around each ankle.

Not that their parents willingly let Anna go. It was a great act of rebellion for her. In the end, her parents were forced to cede to her wishes. At least that way they might at least have some say over them both. Both Anna and Chad carried cell phones and beepers with them, with implanted GPS tracking chips. The mother had come to stay one week when she dropped Anna off, and would come for one more week before she brought her home. These two and a half weeks Chad and Anna had alone together they spent touring the city. In the cold it was so easy for Anna to blend into quilted and coated crowds. And despite the horrible risk of exposure, she loved the city.

So why weren't you around to defend me against my snowy assailant?' Annie teased. I saw you talking to that girl.' Chad's lips turned into a wry smile. She looked pretty.'

She gave me her number. And yeah, she's pretty'.'

I bet she wants to get into your pants.'

I sure hope so.'

~~

Sasami


	2. chapter 2

Thumbing through the hard canvassed covers of antiquey books, Anna scanned the title's evaluatatively. Her brother had long wandered off, down another row of the tall and overflowing shelves. The musty smell and dusty lights of the antique store amplified the slow footsteps and creaking floorboards. Anna liked drifting away in the human's version of silence.

Her finger trailed over a stack of book bindings, and paused atop one in particular. The author and his title gleamed out of an aged cover and her heart leapt. Who would have thought she would've found such a gem on her first visit to a real New York bookstore. She opened her mouth to call out for Chad- when a hearty male hand skidded across her shell. Her jacketed shell. She pitched forward, into the stack of books, and was rewarded by a cackling laugh.

"Nice goin', shellback," An unfamiliar voice gibed behind her. "With moves like those it's wonder you haven't been made a soup yet." The books crumbled before her, and she clutched at shelves to catch herself. They all bowed, the planks and their books slid down and fell upon her. Hitting the ground with an oof' a few remaining books landed on her shell. More laughing by the strange man.

"Ho my god!" Anna gasped, huffing for air as she pushed herself up from the ever shifting pile of books. The whispered voices of the shop had frozen, and footsteps were hurrying to the location of her crash. She was going to be stripped down and photographed and taken to prison where they were beat her. Through the downy sleeve, she felt the man wrap his meaty paw around her arm. She was lifted back up effortlessly, turned around to face his broad chest of intimidation. He waited as she raised her eyes to his, looking at the underside of his jaw, and up his nose, between where his brown-black eyes stared down at her. People were coming in from all sides, some still holding their own antique trinkets.

"Are you all right?"

"What fell?"

"Did you fall?"

"Is anyone hurt?"

"_Woah!_" The man threw his hand back. His eyes widened, turning a shade browner. The color of his shaggy hair. "Jeez!"

"_Annie!_" Chad was there. He charged through the by-standers, and pushed himself in between Anna and the man.

"Woah, guy. Hold up!" The man said, as Chad ordered her to leave.

"Anna, get outta here!" She didn't have to be told twice. Stumbling over a few books underfoot, she made it for the door, pushing away the hands that came to tear away her disguise. On the point of hysterics, she burst out of the shop. And as if she was back in the forest, she broke into a sprint away from the lights.

It was late in the day. Cars engines thundered down the street. Undeterred by the snow and its ice, they rushed along and hurried through the yellow lights. Anna bolted down an alley, finding refuge behind a set of trash cans. Hunkering down in the smelly cove, she wrapped her arms around her knees. A few moments later the sound of running footsteps came towards her. A single set. Anna looked around the shield of plastic to see Chad run past.

"_Chad!_" She called, crawling out a bit. He skidded to a stop and then ran into the alley. Blood was pouring from his face, and he held the palm of his hand to the underside his nose. Red was beginning to dribble onto his shirt.

"Come on!" He grabbed the shoulder of her coat with his other hand, and hoisted her back out to the street. "_Taxi!_" He let go of her and waved at the brown car driving by. It slowed and coasted to the curb and Chad took Anna's hand and pushed her to it. "Get in!"

"Oh my god! Do you need to go to the hospital?" She asked as Chad piled into the cab after her.

"No, we're getting out of here." He said, slamming the door behind him, and pressing the sleeve of his coat against his running nose. "Shit. Get us over the bridge!" He directed to the driver who was gawking at him from the rear view mirror. Once the car started off, Anna turned around in her seat, setting her hands on the back of her leather cushion. The big man from the shop was just coming out the door, squinting after the car. "Broke my freakin' nose." Chad said beneath his sleeve.

"No no no. And again, _no_." The side of his face was beginning to swell. With his head laying over the back of his couch, Chad rested a bag of frozen chicken stir-fry over his eye. Out of the other side he saw his sister pouting and puppy dog eyeing him. "_No_."

"Oh, come on. I'll be in and out and they won't even see me." Anna sat down beside him, displacing the pile of dried bloody tissues onto the floor of his neat clean apartment. "It was a Vonnegut first printing! Do you know how hard it is to find one of those?!"

"I know that you don't."

"And since I tipped all those books over, someone may have noticed it! We have to get it before someone else finds it!" She shook his thigh, as shaking his arm would've caused a good deal of trauma to his face.

"Annie, _no_. It's way to dangerous. The place is probably crawling with cops and special forces by now." Chad lifted his leg up onto the couch, out of her grasp. "You're lucky that I'm not telling mom and dad about this." 

"We'll just drive by then, and see if anyone is there. It's open till nine on Saturdays! It's probably still open!"

"Why do you even want to go back there? You know what was going to happen." He removed the freezer bag gently, and touched the swell around his eye with the pads of his fingers. "Mmmrgh... shit."

"But it didn't." Anna took the bag from him, which was now beginning to drip. "I'm not going to let one scare ruin my time here. You said yourself, people here see weird shit all the time! They probably won't even remember I was there." Chad groaned. "I bet that there's another mutant in there already, making another mess."

"_NO._ And that's final." He took the bag back, getting off the couch and disappearing into the kitchen.

10 Minutes Later.

Anna glanced over her shoulder as the maroon taxi cab drove off down the sanded street. She should've asked for them to wait for her, but that was all right. Catching another cab wouldn't be hard. New York was the city that didn't sleep, so taxis would be around all night.

Taking a deep breath of the chill air, Anna turned her sights to the lighted store front. A fluorescent sign glowed open' through the frost of the window. Buttoning and rebuttoning her coat, Anna summoned the strength and bravado to enter the shop.

Chad had retired to his room and TV, presumably for the night. Since he had a plum view of the front door from the comfort of his bed, he could know if Anna snuck in or out while he was nursing his wounds. _He had a fist like a bear. It's lucky my nose isn't broken._' But Chad had no vantage point on the bathroom window. He may get suspicious after a half an hour passes and the shower would still be running. And also if she emerges from her shower with a coat over her arm. As long as she could climb back up the drain pipe to get to his third floor apartment. It was like a really smooth young tree. She could probably make it... probably.

It was eight fifty-five. Swallowing back fear, Anna slinked through the front door. A bell twinkled above her head, drawing unneeded attention to her. No one was nearby, and it seemed as if she had entered unnoticed.

She could smell the danger. There were humans around, and Chad was at least two miles away. They would recognize her in an instance. That just meant she had to be quick, because she could see the stack of books at the far end of the isle before her. If there just weren't all the stupid lights on. Her book was so close.

Making her way down the isle quickly and efficiently, Anna took note of every stray movement that caught her eye through the tops of each bookshelf. It was notablely quieter than the afternoon. Except for the pounding of her heart. She couldn't remember ever being this anxious or excited.

The books had been stacked up again, out of the order she had found them in. She skimmed the titles. What she was looking for was already fresh in her mind, so she didn't need to look twice at most books. Her fingers twiddled nervously on their way down the stack.

And there it was. _Player Piano_. It had remained unnoticed, and was still thrown into the stack of bargain books. Anna surpressed the urge to scream. She hurried in pulling it out of it's booky sandwich, watching that the rest of the stack didn't tip over in the process. Standing back up, she smelled it deep, she felt the smooth paper cover against her beak, she almost didn't notice the boy standing across from her.

"Hi." He said softly. Anna's eyes snapped off the book cover, into the face of a stranger. She shrieked. He shrieked. She through whatever was in her hand at him. Not the book of course, but the five dollar bill she had brought. With that, she was out the door. The book stack fell over again. "Hey, wait!"

The door clatter closed, but she didn't stop to see. She was already squeezing through a pair of parked cars, setting off an alarm. Anna screamed again, and tore across the icy street. Her traction was better than a car that was passing, and in turning to avoid her, it began twisting out of control. Wheels squealed as the brakes locked them into place, and there was a crash as Anna jumped the snow bank to the next sidewalk. At last she found a place without lights. And even though she could see two men in the poor light of the alley, it seemed a safe place, and she ran in.


End file.
